The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies as well as evolved computing devices making use of networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. Many computing devices are now configured to attach to a network domain and access network resources, such as, for example, web pages, over a plurality of available network interfaces. These network interfaces may include, for example, a cellular network interface, a wired Ethernet interface, a wireless local area network interface (e.g., Wifi interface), and/or the like. These available network interfaces may interface with various wireless access points and networks provided by devices within a network domain.
At least some network domains to which a computing device may attach and those which are relevant to the invention described herein provide network based mobility service (e.g., a network localized mobility management (netlmm) domain) to a mobile host device that is transparent to the mobile host device itself. A network domain may comprise a plurality of mobility access gateways, which may provide access to the network domain through different access networks (e.g., cellular access network, WiFi access network, and/or the like). Accordingly, a mobile host device having multiple network interfaces (e.g., a cellular access card and a WiFi access card) may attach to the same network domain through multiple network interfaces.
A mobile host device may further have one or more data flows (e.g., Internet Protocol data flows or sessions) established over one or more network interfaces through which the mobile host device is attached to a network domain. If the mobile host device is attached to the network domain through multiple network interfaces, it may be advantageous for the mobile host device to move an existing data flow to another network interface. For example, moving a hypertext transfer protocol data flow from a cellular network interface to a WiFi network interface may, for example, offer faster and/or cheaper network access than the cellular access. However, a mobile host device may not be able to move an existing data flow between network interfaces through which the mobile host device is attached to a network domain because existing standards for network domains providing network based mobility (e.g., the Proxy Mobile IPv6 (RFC 5213) specification) do not allow a mobile host device attached to a network domain to use multiple network interfaces at the same time with a common network address. In fact, RFC 5213 mandates that if a mobile host device is attached to a netlmm domain through multiple network interfaces, each network interface must be configured with a unique network address that is based on a different home network prefix (HNP). Thus, existing network domain standards prevent the movement of data flows between network interfaces
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide methods, apparatuses, and computer program products for enabling assignment of a common network address to multiple network interfaces of a computing device attached to a network domain, which may address at least this deficiency and allow a computing device to move data flows between network interfaces.